Volume One
HAPTIC
anodetosundayblog.blogspot.com.au www.facebook.com/anodetosunday @odetosunday
BRONTE WRIGHT Creative Direction / Editorial brontewright@live.com an ode to sunday
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FOREWORD haptic Pronunciation: /ˈhaptɪk/ adjective technical relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception. late 19th century: from Greek haptikos ‘able to touch or grasp’, from haptein ‘fasten’ “Touch has a memory.” ― John Keats
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HAPTIC CONTENTS Human Texture
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Sticks And Tones
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Out Of Touch Out Of Mind
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Maryanne Moodie
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Suzy Weir
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Melissa Moore
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EDITORS NOTE Welcome to the first edition of Haptic. Within, we experience a celebration of creative expressions, through our human hands. This issue acknowledges texture and all that it entails. We ran our hands through hand woven tapestries, squished our face into masses of poms, traced the concaves of the body with our finger, and we enjoyed it. We hope you enjoy it, too.
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HUMAN TEXTURE
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Creative Direction and Photography / Bronte Wright Models / Julian from WINK/ Jessie Hair / Fraser Chomphunut Makeup / Natalie Parker
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STICKS AND TONES
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Creative Direction and Photography / Bronte Wright
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OUT OF TOUCH OUT OF MIND
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Creative Direction / Bronte Wright Photography / Ryan Peter Model / Bree Fry Makeup / Natalie Parker
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MARYANNE MOODIE
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Words / Ami-Leigh O’Donnell-Beggs / Bronte Wright Photography / Bronte Wright
Art teacher, mother, vintage clothing collector, weaver and all round creative goddess - Maryanne Moodie can’t help but do incredible things all the time.
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With a background in fashion, Maryanne has always bought vintage and second-hand clothes, furniture and textiles. “I love the stories and quality that come with a piece that is 50, 75 or even 100 years old. Everything that is still here from years gone past must have been made using great skill, careful attention to detail and quality materials. You just don’t get that today”.
It’s only natural that she moved into creating her own quality pieces of art. Maryanne started weaving magic when she went on maternity leave around two years ago. “I was an art teacher and found an old ridged heddle loom in the back of a store room that was being demolished. I rescued it and in lots of ways it rescued me”. As many women start to lose their sense of identity and feel isolated during pregnancy, Maryanne was just beginning to find new ways to be creative and make connections with family, friends and her community.
Fast-forward to the present day and Maryanne’s days are centred around her 1-year old son Murray and her art. The most important thing about her art is texture without a doubt. “Texture is of
utmost importance. My woven tapestries are such tactile pieces. I know that they have found quite the place on Pinterest and Instagram but the pleasure comes from seeing them in the flesh and rubbing your hands through the shag… or twisting the nubbly parts of some hand spun yarn”.
Previously based in Melbourne, Maryanne’s studio opened out on to her garden where she loved to weave sitting half in and half out of the sunshine and work on one of her several looms. Now in New York City, Maryanne’s flexibility will come in handy as she hunts down an apartment. “Huge statement pieces must be made in the studio, but I have been known to make smaller, tabletop sized pieces on holiday and even at the beach!” When it comes to choosing favourite projects, massive shag pieces are something that Maryanne gets a lot of joy out of. “They have such amazing texture – you just want to rub your hands and face through them”. But Maryanne’s favourite project was the communal loom she set up as part of CraftVic Craft Cubed Festival. “We had a site specific, enormous loom set up in a beautiful florist
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in East Brunswick and we asked people from the community to come and visit, be inspired by the flowers and have a yarn and a yarn. It was so much fun. When it was finished, I took it down and gave it away in a competition to one of the people who came along and had a weave”. Maryanne’s process of creativity is thoughtful and passionate. “I love warping the loom. While threading up the piece, I am thinking about the piece. Then I get out my dot grid design book and make a few graphic shapes that I’d like to explore… As I weave, I change the design, as the yarn usually dictates the design as we go”. It’s not always a straightforward journey for Maryanne, who often gets halfway through a piece only to hate it. “By the time
it is done, it is almost without fail my favourite”. Before Maryanne’s pieces make their way to their new homes, she cuts them from the loom, tying the design to the hanging rod and it goes up on her wall for three days to allow gravity to pull it into shape all the while admiring the finished product. “When I have a big collection order… I get to admire a few of them on the wall together”. How would Maryanne’s creative process look as a picture? “I guess a circle… with a happy face in the middle!” The lovely Maryanne Moodie and her art can be found on Instagram @houseofmaryanne and her website www.maryannemoodie.com
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SUZY WEIR
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Words / Ami-Leigh O’donnell-Beggs / Bronte Wright Imagery / Bronte Wright
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Art and design are in Suzy Weir’s blood – her father’s family name meaning ‘metal artisan’ with ancestors decorating with metal for countless years, while her mother’s family features a line of tailors and lacemakers. It’s not surprising, then, that Suzy has a certain spiritedness for the handmade, and describes herself as a ‘maker’. “I believe we crave evidence of the hand made in objects we desire and so this brings us back to the artisanal aspect of any designer or design, and yes, the hand is an important element somewhere in my process. I have expressed myself with medium that require a direct connection between my brain and my hand, such as beginning any project by sketching, whether it be sketching with crayons on paper, with coloured light on my iPad or three dimensionally with natural clay bio-polymers. That is key, to be able to interpret what I imagine, from my brain directly to my hand, whatever the medium.”
It’s that brain/hand connection that Suzy identifies with in artisan Barbara Armstrong’s sculptural tea cosies, as she “knits from her imagination directly into a three dimensional soft sculpture using knitting needles and wool”. Suzy also has a fascination with using CAD and 3D printing to explore ideas, “yet only after the original idea has evolved by way of the hand. I am exploring this method of translating from brain to making in my next collection, ‘Architectural Ornament’ [a working title]”. In addition to her love of the handmade, Suzy values texture as an important element of her work alongside “colour, proportion, wit, excitement and intrigue”, preferring to utilise a combination of ingredients to capture her audience. “I like my work to lure and tantalise all the senses and so I want the tactility of
my work to be appreciated visually as well as haptically, before, during and after touching the surface and feeling the weight of my adornments”. Suzy is experimenting with finishes in her current work with the lost wax casting method – “the eerily smooth blackened bronze is my latest finish”. The experiments and their outcomes are all part of the process for Suzy as she works with matt gold, pure gold, frosted silver and more in her current work, ‘5th Nature’. “Signal flags are moulded to express the invisible force of the wind against a perceived cotton flag flowing on the halyard of a ship, and then interpreted into an exaggerated guise in a solid metal. How to animate the frozen form of a cast metal, to make it appear to have the qualities of cotton, is executed in this textural performance”. It’s not just metals that intrigue Suzy though. “Materiality is a broad subject, and a never ending fascination of mine. I often check out the materials library at the Material Connexion to see what’s new and to get samples so that I can play and experiment with them. From making organic biopolymers in my kitchen to sourcing 200mm thick wool felt from a felting factory in Germany, there is an enormous joy for me in working with texture and unusually tactile material”. With a list of design education that is incredibly long, it’s obvious that Suzy is a curious soul who seeks a thorough and well-rounded understanding of the nature of design in its various applications and industries, giving her even more to deconstruct, reconstruct and investigate through her own work. Suzy’s inspiration is often materials and meanings, and how she can play with both. “For example my signal flag necklaces each have individual meanings, as they are drawn from a naval code, a language... and those meanings can be
reinterpreted by the wearer. Such as the signal flag for the letter ‘U’ when hoisted on a ship means, ‘you are running into danger’, yet when a necklace made with this signal flag is worn by a person, it can take on another meaning, perhaps, ‘watch out, get close to me and you may just fall’”. Her workspace is not a single space as Suzy moves around regularly, but her current October November 2013 studio is on the water’s edge at the Royal National Park. “My worktable is surrounded on three sides by timber framed windows providing mesmerizing views through the gumtrees towards the moored sailboats on the distant shore across the drowned valley estuary. Every once in a while, when I am very deep in my work, I will hear a tap tap on the window made by a cranky cockatoo trying to get my attention. A fireplace providing crackling warmth when the days are cold and overcast crowns this captivating cottage. Two very large magnifying lights on articulating armatures flank my tools, materials, gems, findings and precious metal ornaments which are sometimes neatly tucked into boxes, but mostly strewn about in a mad mess of texture and colour on gridded cutting boards”.
Suzy Weir is a maker from a long line of makers and while there are many words to describe this talented spirit, we asked her to pick five words to describe herself: “curiosity, avante garde, unabashedly sensual, manically illogical, occasionally laconic, deeply nurturing, and oops, I guess I can’t count”. Suzy Weir will be featured in the Workshopped Christmas Market on December 14, 2013 and takes up residency at Workshopped and Object Gallery for February and March in 2014.
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MELISSA MOORE
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Words / Ami-Leigh O’Donnell-Beggs / Bronte Wright Photography / Jane Kelly Styling / April Sharratt
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“Eclectic, completely untraditional, bold, fearless, unconventional, definitely not a sheep”. Melissa Moore’s description of herself as a creative could just as easily be a description of her textile work. “My work is an extension of me. Addicted to colour, pattern and texture. It’s just in me. I’m constantly evolving”.
Formally, Melissa’s design education is studying fashion at East Sydney Technical College but it goes far further back than that with her mother, grandmother and great grandmother being strong design influences from a very young age. “I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my mother, learning to knit at the age of 5. My great grandmother would tat and sew the most amazing garments”. At age 16 renowned textile artist Kaffe Fassett entered Melissa’s consciousness. “Kaffe Fassett changed my life [when he] published his first knitting book. I remember cutting up mum’s hot pink bread wrappers and knitting it to get the colour and vibrancy that I saw in his work”. Melissa was continually inspired, taking on work experience with Christopher Essex in 1986 where she fell in love with beading and couture. “From there I did commission work for him – I would bead everything, I would have beaded my cat”. It was from here that Melissa moved in to bridal and evening
wear, learning to bead and embroider at Lesage Paris, the beading and couture fashion house in 1999.
When she could no longer create couture gowns, Melissa found her mind opened to textiles and in particular, ethnic textiles and she began quilting. This week Melissa’s store, the Moore Design Collective opens, which she has been working up to for the last ten years. “It was an urgency in me that I couldn’t ignore any longer, to make sure these beautiful pieces have a place to be passed along, to spread the story.”
When it comes to handcrafted goods, Melissa is the first to say she’s obsessed. “There’s an energy – there is something truly beautiful and humbling about something handcrafted, whether it be an appliqué cushion or something simple that someone has put their heart and soul into”. Some say that quilting is the pinnacle of heartfelt creation, with Melissa describing it as a spiritual experience. “Stories are told, you laugh, you cry… and it’s all caught up in this one piece”. Melissa is inspired by anything and everything, but specifically colour, pattern and texture. “It’s everything, it fills me up. I love it”. Needless to say, the sourcing trips for the Moore Design Collective were yet another source of inspi-
ration, Morocco in particular. “Nothing could prepare me for the most incredible beauty… landscape, architecture, the people were so beautiful, the fragrance… Just amazing. I was deeply affected”.
So what sort of life does Melissa usually lead? “I am on the eternal treasure hunt”, which causes her to stumble across all sorts of creative beauties, once finding some handcrafted bags in a photograph that became a quest. “I tracked them down to a village in Columbia, to the people called the Wayuu. They’re part of a community project and part of the proceeds go back into the community”. She even flew to Byron Bay once to find an artist for whom she had nothing but a name and the broad location of Byron.
A true creative spirit and undeniably talented individual, we asked Melissa to describe what her creative process would look like if it was a piece of art: “It would be a collage and it would definitely have bright pink on it and tassels and beads and lots of everything. Definitely colourful, patterned and textured. You’d want to touch it, and I’d like it if you did”. The Moore Design Collective is opening this week in Sylvania Waters, Sydney. @mooredesigncollective mooredesigncollective.com
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CONTRIBUTORS Ryan Peter Photographer @mr_ryan_peter www.ryanpeter.com.au Ami-Leigh O’Donnell-Beggs Writer @amileighness www. happendigital.com.au Natalie Parker Makeup Artist nat.parker@hotmail.com Fraser Chomphunut Hair Noddy’s on King, Newtown. April Sharratt Stylist aprilsharrattstylist.com.au Jane Kelly Photographer janekelly.com.au
H Volume One